


always true to you (in my fashion)

by havisham



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Growing Old Together, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 13:32:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5498879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/pseuds/havisham
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laurie and Ralph muddle through it all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	always true to you (in my fashion)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CakeorDeath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CakeorDeath/gifts).



Starting was always the most difficult part. 

Laurie regarded the blank page before him with suspicion and dislike. It had stayed resolutely white and untouched, despite a half-a-day’s pure, concentrated effort. Every word he typed seemed wrong, every idea he thought of stupid.  
He left the scene of his indecision and went over to the window. The heavy drops of rain were stripping off new, green buds off the trees. The whole world seemed to be waiting, as he was. He cracked open the window and let some of the cool, wet air into the room.

What was he waiting for? Certainly the telephone call he had been expecting from his mother this afternoon had come and gone. The conversation had dragged on, and she had been reluctant to let him go. After her husband’s early death, Lucy had paid more attention to Laurie than ever, and asked many questions about his health and general well-being, which, naturally, made him very uneasy.

Such inquiries could not bode well for him. She might now want to visit him, and truly, he had no ready excuse as to why she should not come. In fact, she should come and it was not as if his weak excuses of having nothing but a poor, bachelor’s existence would dissuade her. It had taken him years to break it to her that he would never be married, and even then she had assumed it was because of his injury.

Laurie had been very willing to let her think that. Now that he was on the wrong side of fifty, there seemed less urgency to his mother’s gentle inquiries about his life. She worried, that he was lonely.

But he was positive that she was too.

He blinked. He had been staring out the window for several minutes or more, his mouth gaping like a fool. There was so much to do -- and a supper to prepare as well. He gave a hopeless look around the room -- it was not quite untidy, but his papers were scattered around and the ashtray was stuffed full of cigarette butts. It would hardly pass muster for some.

But it was cold and writing seemed impossible for the time being. Laurie went into the kitchen to make something to eat.

Something to eat turned out to be to be a tin of sardines with some toast. A pathetic spread, but at least the bread was fresh. He left the light on and took some whiskey upstairs to warm him, and soon he was in bed.

He couldn’t sleep.

His leg hurt, as it did more and more these days. In a cramped and crowded corner of his mind, Laurie thought that he would now welcome a chance to have gotten rid of the thing altogether. He drifted off to sleep thinking of it, and naturally his thoughts turned to the past.

In his dreams, he was in the EMS hospital again, which came as no surprise to him. His dreams were sometimes like this -- he would be in school, or at university, or, rarer still, back in the army. Every time, he was shoved back into his old body, his old mind, even as he desperately chafed against it.

But this time he was tired and leaned against his pillow. 

The life of hospital moved around him, with all its old noises and its smells. In the corner of his eye he saw Charlot moving restlessly in his bed and, opposite him, Reg listened to the radio playing some old song that no one listened to anymore. At the time it was popular, Laurie had, of course, disdained it, but now it seemed to him familiar and not as obnoxious as he remembered it.

Laurie shook his head ruefully. If he hadn’t known before that this was a dream, he certainly knew now. In waking life, he would never admit it…

“Laurie,” a voice said. “Time to wake up.”

Andrew. But when he looked at him, Andrew’s face was less a living face than a blurry photograph, a memory of a memory. Laurie reached for him, more curious than longing (at long, long last). But he felt nothing, saw nothing. 

He was awake, and in a darkened bedroom. Something was moving in the dark.

“Ralph?” His voice was scratchy, with a cough at the end.

“Have some water,” Ralph said, and came closer, bringing the smell of smoke, rain, and a certain tang of something less wholesome with him. But still Laurie turned and craned his neck to get a good look at him.

Laurie shook his head. “I’m all right.”

In the narrow slice of light coming from the window, he could see Ralph there. He looked tired, sagging slightly. His hair lighter than ever -- fair hair skipping gray straight to white, and thinning at the temples. He always looked tired now, as if that extraordinary reserve of strength and will he had were slowly being sapped dry.

Laurie felt a familiar rush: mostly love, and only some pity. Only some, now -- somewhere along the line, he had found that his old, frantic admiration for Ralph had transmuted into something like understanding -- and God, Laurie thought ruefully, he could never feel one simple thing when he looked at Ralph. He never could.

“I’ll get something for that cough, at least,” Ralph said, turning to leave, but Laurie’s laugh, still a little raspy, stopped him. He had smoked more cigarettes than wise today -- yesterday? -- in defiance of the pointed little notes and article cuttings that Alec still sent them. Somewhere along the line, Alec had been reborn as a health-fanatic, a strange thing for a doctor --

“Never mind about that. Come here and say hello to me,” Laurie said, and Ralph did.

*

Of course, he didn’t go to sleep.

Instead he listened to Ralph’s movements on the other other side of the wall. The clock on the wall counted up the minutes, hours and he thought he must have fallen asleep after all, because the next thing he remembered, he felt Ralph sliding in next to him.

Loneliness won easily against resentment, even resentment that had been carefully stored away. He thought nothing of rolling over to Ralph’s side of the bed and pushed his head against the crook of Ralph’s neck and breathed in. Ralph held still before he murmured, quietly, “Did you miss me, Spuddy?”

 

“You know better than to ask,” Laurie said. “Of course I have, Ralph.”

*

It was several days later when Laurie heard a knock at the door. He frowned. He hadn't even finished with the first chapter of the book yet, and he wouldn't, if he were to have so many distractions. It was too little early for Ralph to come home, and he wasn't expecting any visitors. He shuffled to the front door and opened it, ready to turn away any salesmen, when he saw, to his dismay, that his mother was standing in front of him. 

“Mother!” Laurie said, stupidly, as he leaned down and gave her a kiss on the cheek. She accepted his kiss with good grace and waited to be let in. Laurie, still feeling awkward and wrong-footed, looked around for some clue as to why she was here. Lucy, on her part, was content to chatter on about her train-ride down from the country, of the rude young people who had sat in the compartment in front of her, who were so loud and had left so much rubbish on the seats. 

She glanced back at Laurie, still standing gormlessly by the door. 

“My dear! Put on some tea, will you?” 

“Of course,” Laurie said, scrambling to do just that. 

*

Lucy claimed that she had told Laurie about her coming down in their telephone conversation. Laurie maintained that she had not. It wasn't that he was adverse to the idea of his mother coming to see him, but he wished that she had given him some time to prepare. 

“I haven't anything to give you,” Laurie said, as he rummaged through the cupboards for a packet of biscuits. “I don't really -- eat here.” 

“You’ve never really learned to take care of yourself, Laurie,” Lucy said, a touch reproachfully. She had seated herself at the kitchen table, and was pouring out the tea for herself and Laurie. “I had thought that it would not matter, once you were married, but…” 

“That ship has sailed,” Laurie said, and made a little cry of triumph. He had found a packet of Marie biscuits lurking behind an ancient tin of corned beef. 

Soon, the two of them were content to drink tea in silence. The biscuits were hard, and Laurie was sure he had chipped a tooth before he had thought to dip it into the tea. Lucy did not seem to mind. 

Afterward, Lucy filled him in on the local gossip, and Laurie enquired about the house. Lucy had had to give up the vicarage after Straike’s death, but had not wanted to move back into Laurie’s house (which was currently being let to a large family that had come down from London for the country air, they said) and so she shared a little bungalow with another widow, a Mrs. French. 

Mrs. French was a fine companion of whom Lucy had no complaints. The same could not be said of Mrs. French’s bulldog, Baxter, with whom Lucy had formed a surprising antipathy. It dripped all over the floor and farted wherever it went -- it was an old dog and inexplicably fond of wallowing in Lucy’s freshly made bed. 

Lucy could not stand the sight of it. 

Laurie smiled and nodded at the right spots and privately pitied the dog. His mother was an implacable enemy when stirred. He did not think Baxter would be equal to it. Then the telephone rang and he excused himself to answer it. The phone call was from his editor, enquiring about the state of his manuscript. Laurie coughed and leaned against the doorframe. 

After some years of trying to write a novel that really spoke to people, Laurie had, on the recommendation of several people, not in the least Ralph, decided to try his hand with stories about young people. Specifically, the sort of boy’s own adventures tales he used to read as a child, now with some grudging concessions to modernity. Ralph, of course, was a veritable fount of ideas, but Laurie often found himself adding more color, more emotion to the (admittedly thrilling) stories Ralph spun so easily. They weren't accurate, according to Ralph, but they did sell moderately well. 

Laurie was absorbed with smoothing his editor’s ruffled feathers, when Ralph unlocked the front door and walked past him. All he could do was offer him a distracted hello. It was only a few moments before the penny dropped. 

He abruptly said goodbye to his editor and put down the phone. As he hurried to the kitchen, he heard his mother greet Ralph, and Ralph, with some vestiges of his old, charming manner set to work on her. Laurie relaxed, a little. 

“Mr. Lanyon, do you often visit Laurie?” Lucy asked. 

“No, but I do live here,” Ralph said, taking a biscuit and biting down in it. He winced. “Ouch.” 

*

“I’ve known for a long time, you know,” Lucy said, after a while. Laurie, who after noticing that the tea was running low, had set off to make more, stopped what he doing to look at her. Ralph had his hand on his cheek, looking fascinated. Lucy seemed to preen a little, under their joint scrutiny. 

“Gareth, you know, tried to -- ah, warn me about it, as if he knew more about my son than I did! I cannot say that I'm glad -- you must understand, I believe Laurie would have been happier in --” she blushed pink, here, looking more like a young girl than she had in years. “In a more convenient relationship, but -- thirty years is a very long time. A long time for anyone.” 

“It is,” Ralph agreed. 

Laurie sat down on his chair like sack of potatoes. He wanted to put his head in his hands, but he felt Ralph’s hand -- his right one, on his thigh, and a quick squeeze. He could hear what Ralph was saying without speaking. _Really, Spuddy, it’s for the best._

The conversation turned again, expertly guided by Ralph and his mother, Laurie hardly paid attention to it. The realization came then. For the first time in his life, certainly since the war, Laurie realized that he was hiding nothing. Listening to the steady stream of conversation, he allowed himself a measure of relief. 

Soon -- but not too soon -- it was time for his mother to go. She declined Laurie’s (not exactly half-hearted) offer for her to stay the night and go tomorrow. She kissed his cheek and looked at him. It struck Laurie that his mother was really, a deeply pragmatic person. She kept the people she needed, and discarded the ones she did not.

“I will see you at Christmas,” she said, severely. She glanced over at Ralph. “The both of you.” 

“Yes, mother,” Laurie said. 

“Goodbye, Mrs. Straike,” said Ralph, as Lucy went through the door, and he shut it. 

“Oh God!” Laurie said, as soon as he heard her steps go down the hall and away. He looked at Ralph, almost accusingly. He had the idea that Ralph found it funny. But Ralph only looked back at him with a somber look.

Laurie narrowed his eyes. “You were very early today.” 

“Was I?” Ralph asked, looking as innocent as he could. 

“Ralph! Did you know…?” 

“Don’t be silly, how could I have known? But I am glad it happened. Couldn’t get old and still hide from your mother, Spud.” 

Laurie imagined it -- a future like that, hiding and all the stupidity that came with it. Coldness wrapped up in complacency. A horrible possibility. 

Laurie nodded. “I suppose.” 

“Come on,” Ralph said, linking their arms together. “I’ll make it up to you.” 

“You certainly will,” Laurie muttered, bumping their hips together. Ralph laughed at that, and Laurie felt warmth spread throughout his chest. He could not help but smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta, Naraht!
> 
> Title from _Kiss Me Kate_.


End file.
